Our first small town visit is Aveiro. It is often described as the Venice of Portugal. There are several cannal running through the city, and you can see small boats manueveoring through the city. The city is also known for its beautiful traditional houses. These houses are decorated with tiles made from china covering majority of its outside. The most usual ones have blue and white patterns, and often you can also see tiles of other colours. My hypothesis is that this style decoration reflects the Mulism and Chinese influence in Portugal. ^^
But of course what attracts us here is THE FOOD! We were told by Alex's uncle that there are great enguia (eel) in Aveiro. So we asked some locals and found the best seafood restaurant in town! I had the best enguia soup in the world! And Alex worked on some fried enquia for a long time. I just remember through out the lunch, Alex and I concentrated so much on our food, we didn't exchange more than 5 sentences for the entire hour! My soup was huge, but it is so amazing that I really stuffed myself and almost finished it all. The soup had a really intense flavour that still makes my mouth watering whenver I think about it. Oh...I am dying to go back to that restaurant and have that soup again!Ok...enough about the food, our second stop on the way was Coimbra. When we reached there, it was raining outside, so we stayed in until almost the evening before heading outside to see the town. Coimbra's old city is on top of a little hill. So we climbed all the way up and visited several churches, the Coimbra University and some gardens on the hill. Maybe it is because of the weather, Alex didn't like Coimbra too much. We had a quick walk and returned home.
The next day, we set off early and visited Obidos. Obidos is a pretty little town with the old city center perserved perfectly: it has the complete city wall, castle, church, old houses, etc. It probably looks exactly the same as 200 years ago. We walked on the city wall and saw the city from the top...it is filled with little red roof top houses...just like in the fairytales. When we came down from the wall and walk within the city, the street is filled with pretty flowers! You can find all kinds of flowers here: rose, lily, etc. etc. We loved it here!
Our final stop is Ericeira. Again this town is referred to us by Alex's uncle, and you can probably guess why he referred it. So Alex's uncle has been coming to this town for vacation for 11 summers continuously, and always visited this restaurant called Riva. He became good friend with the owner and recommended us to come here again. So our only mission in this town, after all the driving, toll, getting lost, etc. is to EAT! I can never forget our lunch in Riva. We had great sea food, and too much of it! In fact, I never knew that I can get full just from eating crabs! And that day! I ate so much crab and I actually had to say stop! I could go on and on to describe the amazing seafood in this restaurant, but I can one picture is worth 1000 words. So just take a look at what we had that day! UNFORGETABLE! And yes, that's why I fell in love with Portugal!
0 comments:
Post a Comment